5. You hate candidates not named Donald Trump. Remember when Ted Cruz was your idol? When he was going to turn the world upside down and bring the TruCon revolution to its zenith? A month ago seems like a long time, doesn’t it? Ben Carson? Suddenly haram. Perry? Off the list. I’ve even seen Trump fans savaging Scott Walker, who almost everyone seems to love. You do know we’ve seen this movie before, right? A celebrity candidate? Cult-like devotion? Iconic posters? Vehement, bordering on violent reaction to any criticism of the One? Weird; I remember conservatives in 2008 reacting to the Obama Cult with disdain, but now we’ve got one of our own.

6. You don’t know and don’t care why the professionals want Trump in the rear-view mirror. It’s not because we hate you or look down on you. It’s not because we want to elect RINO X. It’s not because the Evil Establishment wants to turn the Southwest into Aztlan. It’s because Donald Trump is not electable. He is the surest guarantor of Hillary Clinton’s election. If I were working for Hillary, I couldn’t think of a better weapon than Donald Trump to blow up the GOP, damage the conservative movement and put Hillary behind the Resolute Desk. And that’s not even factoring in a 3rd party run on Trump’s part.

7. You hate political consultants. Message received. We’re the despised lepers of American political life because we’re warning you about Trump. You hate that we work for candidates who are not perfectly ideologically homogenous with your litmus test-du-jour. You hate me, for mocking His Majesty King Donald the Coiffed. You can’t imagine I do it because he’s not a conservative, and that by every professional metric this is a con game, not a campaign. A little part of you hates us because we’re telling you the truth about this flamboyant fraud, and you loathe being wrong, just as you were about Akin, McDaniel, Angle or the others.

8. You think we’re only about Jeb. I’ve probably had a hundred people tweet at me that I’m working for, beholden to, or in a relationship (#LoveWins!) with Jeb Bush. Fun fact: I’m not. One presumption that has reached medieval witch-hunt intensity is that every member of the consulting community is a) liberal, b) evil, c) a minion of the hated Bush campaign and d) in league with the media and the DNC to elect Hillary Clinton. We’re the wicked handmaidens of the dreaded “establishment.”

9. You think Donald Trump is the character he plays on television. You think his swagger and bellowing is the Leadership America Needs and that he’s an antidote to the herd of RINOs running for president. You think Donald Trump is the only one speaking truth to power. You think he’s the only one who really gets you. Remember when you had a crush on some movie or TV star as a teenager? Of course you do. You weren’t really in love with them. You were infatuated by a crafted, manufactured, stage-managed image. The purpose of what Clive James called “The Fame Planet” is to manage and monetize celebrity; you’re being played by a celebrity branding operation. There is nothing authentic about the character of Donald Trump that you’re seeing on the campaign trail. (Certainly not that exotic item that rests on his head.)

10. Every minute wasted on Trump hurts the eventual nominee in the general election. There are five or six smart, gifted and thoughtful national candidates in this race. I don’t expect that we will agree on who will be the best candidate to compete against Hillary, and that doesn’t matter. All in the broad-appeal, competent candidates like (in no particular order) Rubio, Cruz, Bush, Walker, Paul, Perry, Fiorina are markedly superior to Donald Trump for the general election. You can make a case for any one of them...or you could if Trump wasn’t sucking all the air out of the room. All Trump is doing now is giving Hillary Clinton more footage for attack spots.

As a celebrity, Donald Trump knows that fame and ratings are fleeting. The hit show of one season can disappear in the next. I won’t make a “Donald, you’re fired” joke because it would be trite, but the ratings are coming in, and the odds are heavily against Trump making the schedule for next Fall.